Texas Tech receiver Austin Zouzalik was a first-semester freshman hosting a high school senior on the Jones AT&T Stadium sideline the night the Red Raiders beat Texas in a memorable game two years ago. Quarterback Jacob Karam was the visiting recruit, and he wound up signing with Tech.

“He’s a pretty excitable guy anyway,” Zouzalik said Monday, “and he was asking, ‘Is this what all the games are like?’ I kind of lied to him: ‘Yeah, it’s always like this.’

“He had the time of his life, and I remember rushing the field. I had a sprained ankle, and I was sprinting out there.”

Graham Harrell’s 28-yard touchdown pass to Mike Crabtree with one second left gave Tech a 39-33 upset of top-ranked and undefeated Texas. Tech coach Tommy Tuberville, then in his last year at Auburn, remembers getting home in time to watch the second half and being wowed by the stadium sound.

“I could hear it through the television,” Tuberville said.

Tech starting cornerback Will Ford was another kid on a recruiting trip that night. He was already committed to the Red Raiders at the time, but if they needed a clincher, that game was it.

“I was on the sideline whenever Crabtree made the winning catch,” Ford said. “That was very exciting to see. It was one of the main reasons I came here. I wanted to play for a good team, and now I’m playing for them.”

On Saturday, Ford and friends will try to recreate the outcome, if not the drama, when Tech (2-0) hosts Texas (2-0) in a Big 12 Conference opener. Texas is ranked No. 6 in The Associated Press Top 25 and No. 4 in the USA Today coaches poll.

Tech doesn’t have a spot in either after wins against SMU and New Mexico, though Tuberville said he thinks the Red Raiders are a Top 25 team. They didn’t play like it from start to finish in either game, letting SMU off the mat after leading 35-14 and having a sloppy stretch at UNM after leading 21-3.

They haven’t run the ball or defended the run as well as Tuberville wants. They’ve had not-so-shining moments in special teams and red-zone offense.

Two games in with almost an entirely new staff, Tuberville said the Raiders are “not as good a team right now as we’ll be five or six weeks from now.”

He has a good feeling about Saturday’s game, nonetheless.

“You’ve got to have that even keel,” he said, “but I could see in our seniors’ eyes the difference in our senior meeting yesterday and last week, and that’s what you want to see as a coach.

“I think our guys will play well. We’ll play much better, because you can see the focus early. When you can see the focus early, then you’ve got a chance.”

Part of Tuberville’s immediate concern stems from his defense being behind. The unit gave up 433 yards and 23 first downs to New Mexico, which was coming off a 72-0 loss to Oregon the week before. Tuberville expected growing pains since he and new coordinator James Willis completely revamped the defense, and Tuberville says it’s too complex to be absorbed overnight.

Eventually, the Tech coaches want their defense to look like UT’s when the Longhorns are at their best, though not for copycat reasons. Tuberville, Willis and Texas defensive coordinator Will Muschamp were all together at Auburn, where Muschamp was defensive coordinator in 2006 and 2007 and Willis was linebackers coach from 2006 to 2008.

“Our schemes are almost alike defensively,” Tuberville said. “Theirs is the same as ours. They’ve got a few years ahead of us on teaching and playing certain techniques and fundamentals. Watching them, they look very similar in terms of what’s going on. But you can tell the experience, how it shows up and how they play things.”

Tuberville said he knows Muschamp “as well as I know anybody in coaching” and admires his coaching fervor.

“There’s nobody gets any more excited about playing football, no matter who you’re playing,” Tuberville said. “With his enthusiasm, he gets his players to playing hard.”

Tuberville said neither set of coaches will have to spend much time getting their players to play hard Saturday.

“With a team like Texas coming in here, it’s hard not to get out of control,” Zouzalik said. “But we’ve got to stay even keel and rely on each other as a team and not pay attention to what happens outside the doors of our facility.”